Until the Knight Comes (32 page)

“Drop my skirts at once or I’ll do more than blacken your eye, you bastard!” Mariota stood rigid, glaring at him.

“Oh-ho!” A bold-faced man thrust his hand beneath his plaid—despite Ewan’s harsh words. “Och, aye,” he called, his hand already pumping, “having her drop those skirts would be a far sight better than just airing ’em!”

But Ewan the Witty paid the man no heed. Instead, his brows snapped together in a fierce frown.

“So I’m a bastard, eh? And the word hissed with such scorn.” He looked round at his men, feigning astonishment. “And here we’d thought you favored such churls? Men of tainted birth?”

Mariota pressed her lips together, refusing to be goaded.

Ewan tightened his grip on her skirts and jerked higher. “As for what you’ll
do,
were I to set one finger to you, I’d have you writhing with need so fast you’d forget both of your baseborn lovers!”

“You, sirrah, are a dead man.” Mariota let her eyes blaze and gave him a scorching look. “And you couldn’t stir me if you had till the end of all ages to try.”

Her fury smoldering, she drew herself up and squared her shoulders. “Indeed,” she said, her voice measured and cold, “I doubt you could rouse any woman.”

“Say you?” Angry color flooded Ewan’s face and his eyes glittered, his lips thinning as if he’d bit into something bitter. “Be glad I am not so hungry for cat meat just now, Mariota of Dunach.”

He stepped closer, leaning in until his hot breath almost gagged her. “When I am, you may be sure I’ll show you how demanding a dead man can be—even if I think having you will be about as pleasurable as licking brine from a stinging nettle!”

“Try it and I’ll ne’er take you to the golden lute.” Mariota fixed him with a haughty stare. “It is hidden where no man shall find it—”

“In Assynt?” Ewan slid a glance at his men and spat into the heather. “Can it be that no man shall find it because it is no longer there?”

Mariota swallowed.

Truth was, she had no idea where the lute was.

Worse, she’d never even seen the thing! And the flash of cold anger in Ewan’s eyes gave her the sickening impression that he knew it.

“I told you it’s in Assynt,” she said all the same—only to be rewarded by another upward tug on her skirts. Cold, damp air swirled across her thighs, chilling her even as fear heated the back of her neck. “It is—”

“Perhaps there where the Keeper of Cuidrach hoards his siller?” Ewan swelled his chest. “His well-stuffed coin bags?”

Mariota gasped.

Hugh’s man smiled . . . a wicked smile full of glowering menace.

“O-o-oh, aye, you heard aright.” He sneered at her. “You wagered poorly. We already ken the lute is hereabouts somewhere. Your own Keeper swore to surrender it to us—along with his fortune.”

“He wouldn’t have.” Mariota shook her head. The heat at her nape slid around and down to spread through her chest, the hot pressure stealing her breath. “Ne’er would he have bargained with you.”

“Ah, but he did—and for you!” This time Ewan shook his head. “The man is a fool, besotted beyond reason,” he said, knotting her skirts so her legs remained exposed.

Satisfied, he stepped back and flipped his fingers in derision. “You’ve ensorcelled him. Why else would he offer up the entirety of his coin, the lute, and even his own sweet life to spare yours?”

His life?
Mariota blinked, the tightness in her chest almost stopping her heart.

Her mouth went dry. “I do not believe you.”

She couldn’t.

Yet even as denial churned inside her, clawing at her innards and watering her knees, words Kenneth had said to her only recently whirled through her mind and squeezed her heart with dread.

There is nothing I would not do to protect you.

He’d even sworn he’d climb the face of the precipitous cliff that had scarred him—and not just once, but repeatedly, if doing so would keep her safe.

Had even vowed to marry her—and like as not would, even after learning her deepest secrets.

Her Keeper was that kind of man.

And now she’d thrust him into the midst of a maelstrom—a nightmare that was anything but his own making.

Only hers.

She glanced aside lest Ewan the Witty see fear in her eyes, her pain and regret, but when she looked back at him she recognized the truth in his gloating.

She would pay dearly for her foolishness and her Keeper would be relieved of an even higher price.

Her blood chilling at the thought, she forced her voice to remain steady. “I cannot . . . will not believe you,” she repeated, the slight change of wording doing little to comfort her.

Far from it, cold shivers spilled through her when Ewan’s lip curled.

He shrugged. “And I believe neither of you,” he said, his words confirming her fears. “Why do you think we’ve been riding in circles? We are waiting, my lady. Waiting until your knight comes. And he will, love-blind fool that he is. He’ll rally his few men and ride out to rescue you. And then . . .”

He paused, clapped his hands in front of her face. “Then our long journey will prove worthwhile indeed.” He stepped away from her and threw a triumphant look to his men. “We shall have enough spoil to live on for all our days, you for sport, and your fool Keeper to ransom to his uncle.”

Mariota bristled, her distress giving way to anger. “A plague on you! He will not be led into a trap. None of his blood. That I promise you!”

“You, my lady, are not in a position to promise anything.” He seized her braid and wound it tightly around his fist. “As for your latest bastard lover . . .” He paused, cast a glance at the nearby hills. “That one will soon come charging out of the mist and into our hands, whether it pleases you or nay.”

Releasing her hair, he eyed her from beneath lowered brows. “Kith and kin mean everything to such a man—his lady even more. He’ll have lost his reason upon discovering you gone. And a man in such a state is always . . . vulnerable.”

He looked pleased by the notion. “But even if he has retained his wits, it matters not. Before the morrow’s moonrise, we shall have him.”

“Or he you,” Mariota shot back, but he’d already turned, was striding away to disappear into the mists.

Frowning after him, she added, “He’ll fall upon you with a fury to set the heather ablaze.”

That she knew—even if the surety of it terrified her.

“And well he might, my lady.”

Wee Finlay appeared at her elbow, flicked a wary glance at Ewan’s retreating back. “Blood breeds true no matter what side of the pallet a man is born on,” he said, low-voiced. “The MacKenzies are a fierce lot, not ones to shy from whipping out their steel.”

Mariota tensed at his words. They sliced through her to the core, cleaving her heart. No one knew better than she how ill at ease her lord yet felt with a blade in his hand.

He’d told her often enough, seeming almost proud of his lack of a knight’s usual upbringing. And she’d seen him at swording practice, knew his skills needed honing.

His honest humility was by no means . . . unfounded.

Mariota’s throat closed. Able to swing a dashing blade or no, he was all she’d e’er dreamed a man should be. More. So much more that the mere thought of harm coming to him froze her heart.

Losing him would rip her soul, steal the warmth and light from her life in one vicious swoop. Leave her unable to breathe and doom her to walk blind through unending darkness.

Hugh the Bastard had ne’er touched her.

Not truly.

Now she loved.

Couldn’t bear to lose the man whose name stood writ on her every indrawn breath, who held her happiness, her
life,
in the well-doing of his own.

She shuddered, blinking back the stinging heat blurring her vision.

“Och, dinna look so stricken,” Wee Finlay said. “All is no yet lost and I have my doubts you’ve cause to fret.”

He cast another glance in Ewan’s direction, reached crooked fingers to undo the knot in her skirt. “See you, I may be a bit past my better days, but I . . . remember. The kind of passion that burned in your Keeper’s eyes when he spoke of you can give men untold strength and courage, doesn’t always addle their wits as some would have you believe.”

Mariota swallowed. “Why are you doing this?”

“Would that I could do more.” He tugged down her skirts, smoothed the folds until her legs were again covered. When he straightened, he gave her an apologetic smile. “It shames me that I cannot.”

“You would help me?”

But rather than answer her, he glanced at her bound wrists and even in the misty, half-light, she would’ve sworn a tinge of color stained his cheeks. She was certain of it when he plucked at his plaid, indicated his scrawny shoulders, his less than impressive stature.

Indeed, even standing at his tallest, he barely reached her chin.

He
did
produce a cloth-wrapped beef rib and a wineskin from beneath his plaid and offered both to her, viands she greedily accepted, biting into the cold meat with gusto and gulping heartily each time he held the wineskin to her lips.

“Right enough, lass.” He used the cloth from the beef rib to wipe her mouth, her chin. “I canna tarry, shouldn’t be seen with you.”

He took a step backward, gave her a twisted, embarrassed-looking smile. “Being one o’ them isn’t proof against Ewan’s wrath. For truth, he’s already vowed to toss me to the Each Uisge if I vex him.”

Mariota studied him, wondered what held the little man to such a band of marauders—something she’d oft pondered at Drumodyn—for unlike her, he couldn’t claim to have been dazzled by Hugh Alesone’s high looks and golden tongue.

“Why?”

“There are some things a man just canna do—if he wants to sleep at night,” he said, his face shadowing. “See you, I saw the alewife climb down from Hugh’s tower window that night, knew there’d been more afoot than you admitted, knew—”

“I did not kill him,” Mariota cut in, the denial sounding strange, thick, and choked. “And neither did Elizabeth Paterson. ’Twas Hugh’s heart-pains.”

She paused, lowering her voice. “All at Drumodyn knew he suffered them and that night . . . that night, I found him abed with the alewife. He saw me on the threshold and the shock must’ve caused him to have a seizure for he clutched his chest and . . . and died.”

“But your lady’s dirk? It was—”

“In his chest, I know.” Mariota paused again, the painful memories making her own chest tighten. “Elizabeth Paterson used my shock to overwhelm me. She grabbed the dirk and thrust it into Hugh’s heart, jeering that I’d be blamed for his death—and I was.”

Wee Finlay looked at his feet, shook his head. “And I ne’er said anything . . .”

“You’ve helped me now, and I thank you,” Mariota said, a surprising sense of peace settling over her.

She closed her eyes for a moment, pushing away the images branded onto her memory and drinking in the sounds of rushing wind and a nearby river, willing the familiar, well-loved sounds to soothe her.

She also caught the muffled roar of distant cataracts, the foaming, splashing run of rapids they’d passed earlier. A sound that reminded her of approaching thunder, the pounding of her own blood in her ears.

The need for caution.

But when she opened her eyes, Finlay was still looking at the ground. His mouth tight, he was nudging a clump of deer grass with the worn toe of his boot and much to her surprise, she felt a wave of empathy.

A jolt of sympathy for the little man who seemed to want to be noble but lacked the courage to follow his heart.

Feeling for him, and for herself, Mariota drew a deep, shuddering breath, seeking strength from the expanse of moor and glens stretching away beyond the mist—even if she couldn’t see much of them, only the day’s gray pall.

The hills were there all the same.

She could feel them.

The crags and high places, the silver-shimmering lochs and deep, shadowy glens. Not just land, sea, and sky, but the whole of her existence, her
heart,
throbbed in tune with these great moody hills and she refused to believe they’d not protect her now.

Wouldn’t wrap their beauty and wonder around her.

Their magic.

She cleared her throat, looked at the wizened little man beside her. “Sir Kenneth believes there is a special healing in these hills,” she said, sure of it. “Mayhap you will now find yours. I hope it will be so.”

He looked up at that, and the regret on his face made her wince. “There are dark places in my soul, lady. I dinna deserve your forgiveness.” He spread his hands, appearing even more uncomfortable. “See you, yon blackguards were the only folk that would give such a hump-backed wretch as me a roof o’er my head—a sense of belonging. They tolerated me not for my muscle but for my sharp eyes and my ability to keep my mouth shut.”

He spat then, dragging his sleeve over his mouth. “And
that
is something I’ve grown sore tired of, of late. I—”

“Finlay!” Ewan the Witty’s voice cut through the mist. “Where did you last see that fool fox?”